signify potential outcomes sensitive to earlier decisions made through the game ’ s core butterfly effect mechanic . These collectible items are found in the game randomly and offer players the opportunity to avoid or follow seen fate via brief precognitive glimpses into future events . Totems in this way serve a vital function in Until Dawn because , without trust in the coherence of a game ’ s fictional world and the willingness to base choices on information about that world , all choice situations would appear as arbitrary to the player , regardless of whether they are or not . Semantics and gameplay are therefore constantly at strife , and as the game progresses , the player as director will often learn to narrow their expectations ( that were initially based on real-world analogy to genre ) by analysing what the game actually does offer as options , and deriving possible rules and consequences from their personal experience .
These new consequences are then based on inferences about game design , not genre , and they can gradually override the more narratively derived player expectations . The main feature of game design is the prioritization of victory states , the explorative attitude synonymous with the idea that one can complete a game , that is actualize all of its available nascent options . 25 When a video game presents an option , left or right for instance , choice is intended to create narrative content specifically for the player ; to let them be included in the storytelling process . However , extrinsic awards incentivizing alternative ways of playing video games , known as trophies , fundamentally distance the player from their 25
Sabine Schenk , Running and Clicking : Future Narratives in Film ( Berlin : De Gruyter , 2013 ), p . 191 .
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